By Nick Catoggio
Thursday, September 24, 2026
The more a man revels in his own dominance, the more
eagerly he’ll shine the shoes of some more domineering man.
We might call that “Hegseth’s paradox” in honor of our
defense secretary, who’s forever complaining about the low-T softness of those who serve under him when he’s not tongue-bathing the Florsheims of the man under whom he
serves. But it feels unfair. Why single out “No Tab Pete” for a universally familiar phenomenon, the
domineering bully who abases himself before his male superior?
Every authoritarian political movement, past and present,
has been built on that dynamic. Partly it’s a matter of self-interest: By
demonstrating obedient servility toward those who outrank him, the mediocre
bully normalizes an ethic of servility from which he benefits among those he
outranks. But at the heart of it is old-fashioned lizard-brained power worship.
The reason red-pilled bros who preen about being “alpha males” invariably
fangirl over Donald Trump is because they envy his accrual of power and admire
the ruthlessness with which he wields it over weaklings.
And so, Hegseth’s paradox (sorry, Pete): The more
boorishly a man postures as Achilles, the more likely he is to be some more
powerful man’s political concubine. Under postliberalism, someone’s boots are
always being licked.
We got a superb illustration of the “obsequious bully”
dichotomy this week from the president, who used his address to the United
Nations on Wednesday to revel in his own dominance. “To the victor belongs the
spoils,” Trump said at one point of Venezuela, celebrating a deal he
negotiated at gunpoint with that regime to
plunder the country’s oil wealth. I doubt we’ll ever come closer to a
formal statement that banditry is now a core priority of U.S. foreign policy.
Later he raised the possibility of escalation in Iran and
sounded whimsical about the destruction he might cause. “I have a big decision
to make,” he told his audience. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets
them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Or do I
annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance
to kill and destroy people and countries again?”
To annihilate or not to annihilate? He’s keen for you to
know that he’s the one who gets to decide.
That was the bullying side of the president. A day later
we got to see the other side, when a more domineering man touched down at Joint
Base Andrews and the military troops Trump commands got on their knees—literally—to
tidy up the red carpet that was rolled out to welcome the visitor.
The dictator of China had arrived, and the president
himself was there to receive him. “U.S. leaders by custom do not greet arriving
heads of state at the airport, holding back at the White House to offer a
reception on their own turf,” the Washington Post noted. “And Xi [Jinping] did not
greet Trump at the Beijing airport when the U.S. president flew there in May.”
Modern presidents have reserved the honor of an airport
reception for visiting popes, not foreign leaders—and certainly not leaders of
enemy nations. In fact, when Barack Obama supplied a little pomp and
circumstance for a visit to the Pentagon by then-Vice President Xi in 2012, he
was criticized for it by … well,
guess.
Why was China’s tyrant received so warmly? Why is he even
here?
What’s the transaction?
Trump is often described as transactional by nature,
which is true but not as true as people say.
For instance, he could “purchase” some goodwill and
improve his party’s chances in this fall’s election right now by announcing
that he’s ending the global trade war he started last year. But he won’t. The
tariff power allows him to menace other nations on a whim; it’s too precious to
him to be transacted away for votes.
Still, “Trump is transactional” is broadly true insofar
as it’s polite shorthand for “Trump has no moral conscience that might deter
him from partnering with villains if he sees some advantage in doing so.”
Foreign policy minus morality is realpolitik. That must be what the
president is up to in welcoming Xi to the White House.
So, I’ll bite: What sort of transaction is he pursuing
with China that’s so important that it requires a state visit from that
country’s president to hash it out? What’s the goal of this summit?
Put that question to a sample of Americans and the
consensus response, I’m sure, would be “artificial intelligence,” which is a
sensible guess. The
AI-pocalypse is a hot topic in the United States, and it’s widely
understood that the race with China is impelling U.S. firms onward to develop
the technology at a reckless pace. When Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic,
called for global cooperation on a slowdown a few weeks ago, he
explicitly encouraged the U.S. government to “coordinate with authoritarian
governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the
challenges of verifying compliance.”
That must be what the summit is about, one might assume.
Trump and Xi are going to hash out some sort of digital arms deal to ensure
that neither side unwittingly builds Skynet.
But one would be wrong. “Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of
discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is,” Trump wrote this morning. “That is China’s position also.”
The one politician in Washington who’s remained glibly
dismissive of the risk from AI amid surging doomerism happens to be the
person Americans placed in charge of U.S. diplomacy. Sources told The
Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire that, at best, some sort of toothless
“broad-strokes agreement” about managing the threat might emerge from Xi’s
visit. AI isn’t why this summit is being held.
Maybe it’s about trade? You may recall that the U.S. and
China reached a deal last October to de-escalate after Beijing
sharply expanded export controls on rare-earth minerals and Trump threatened
100 percent tariffs in response. That spooked the White House, which agreed to
lower tariffs in return for lifting those export controls. The deal that was
struck was set to expire in November, forcing the two sides to huddle recently
about an extension. Perhaps that’s why Xi is here.
But no, that’s not it either. Treasury Secretary Scott
Bessent announced yesterday, around the time Xi was landing in the U.S., that a
two-month extension has been agreed to. With that box now
checked, it’s unlikely that the two presidents will spend meaningfully more
time on it. Besides, a modest deal continuing the status quo isn’t the sort of
thing that would normally require the dictator’s physical presence in
negotiations.
Are they going to talk about Taiwan? Surely it’ll come
up. But even if Trump wanted to threaten Xi on that subject, and there’s little
reason to think he does, America is in no position militarily right now for him to do so. Between
the president’s fecklessness toward allies and the Pentagon’s inability
to protect its assets from a comparatively minor power like Iran, a preemptive Taiwanese surrender to China over the next
decade seems more probable than America joining the island’s defense in war.
If nothing else, you might think, Trump will use his face
time with Xi to call him onto the carpet for various forms of treachery
practiced by China at America’s expense. There’s the small matter of that
primetime televised speech he gave two months ago in which he accused the
Chinese of having at one point plotted
to manufacture ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. It was a momentous
allegation! Here, at last, is his chance to interrogate the prime suspect. Do
you suppose he’ll take it?
There’s also a report today about China quietly supplying Iran with the parts needed for the drones it’s
using in combat with the United States. In fact, between its sanction-dodging
consumption of Iranian oil and its military support for Tehran, possibly no
country has done more to enable Iran’s war effort than China has. “Satellite
imagery procured from Chinese entities has been linked by U.S. officials to an
Iranian strike that killed three American troops,” the Wall Street Journal
noted in its scoop this morning. “Chinese companies have also helped provide
chemical precursors used to manufacture the types of ballistic missiles used in
the attack.”
Do we think the president will be more Achilles or more
concubine in how he broaches that subject with Xi? A clue: When he was reminded
a few days ago that China represses its media, he reflexively rushed to China’s
defense. “I think we’re repressive also,” he replied, a predictable
reverse tu quoque for him—but also, at this particular moment, more
than a little true.
Trump isn’t going to “get tough” with Xi. And there’s no
major deal in the offing that requires the two men’s direct participation. So
why did he want to meet him?
Prestige.
For prestige, of course. We’ve reached the point in
history where the president of the United States believes he gains more
prestige by appearing with the leader of China than vice versa.
That’s why the reception for Xi yesterday irritated so many observers. It didn’t just offend their
sense of morals to see the world’s most powerful totalitarian received in the
land of the free with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for, of all
people, the pope. It offended their pride in American power.
You would think our nationalist, image-obsessed blowhard
of a president would be similarly sensitive to looking like the supplicant in
his relationship with a foreign leader, especially this foreign leader
given the postliberals’ empty posturing about containing China. And if he
insisted on being a supplicant, granting Xi the courtesy of an airport greeting
that wasn’t granted to him when he visited Beijing, one might assume that he at
least wouldn’t go over the top by rolling out a literal red carpet.
His behavior yesterday suggests that Trump now sees China
not merely as a “peer” nation but as primus inter pares
internationally. I’m open to the argument—the president’s second term has been
a sustained exercise in shrinking America’s influence in the world while expanding
China’s—but no patriot could watch it without cringing.
The spectacle would have been more tolerable if Trump
were a more genteel character. “The politesse was excessive and unfortunate but
well-meaning,” observers might have said. Instead it was an unusually stark
example of Hegseth’s paradox: The great American bully, always so imperious
toward those weaker than him, polished
the visiting emperor’s shoes to a high shine.
Prestige largely answers the question of why he was eager
for Xi to visit, I think. “Beyond the awkward imagery are deeper questions
about the strategy,” CNN’s Jim
Sciutto said of their summit. “President Trump has rolled out the red
carpet for Xi, [Vladimir] Putin and Kim [Jong Un] multiple times with few
concessions to show for it. Summits and state visits have historically been
contingent upon deliverables. Now, the meetings themselves have become the
deliverable.”
That’s correct. The point of the meeting is the meeting.
Trump palpably envies the autocratic power those three men have accrued
and admires the ruthlessness with which they wield it. The thrill of prestige
he gets from meeting them isn’t unlike the feeling, I’d imagine, that one of
those random red-pilled chuds I mentioned earlier might get upon meeting Trump
himself. Here, right before me, is the apotheosis of the type of man I’d
like to be.
The reason Xi and Putin are welcomed with red carpets and Volodymyr Zelensky
isn’t is because Trump derives no similar sense of vicarious prestige from
Zelensky. It does nothing for him to meet the leader of a smaller power without
imperial pretensions, however heroic and impressive its war effort has been.
The president only lights up when he gets to meet a would-be emperor. Because
when would-be emperors come to him, it reassures him that his stature is
imperial too.
One can even draw a straight line, I think, from Trump’s
odd preoccupation with White House renovations to his red-carpet reception for
Xi. Both are answers to the question, “How should a king behave?” A king should
have his own palace ballroom. And a king should receive a visiting king with
royal fanfare.
It’s tempting to wave all of that away and say no, no,
no, this is about postliberal foreign policy, not about imperial LARPing.
That is, the reason Trump greets Xi and Putin with special deference isn’t
because he gets a dictatorial contact high from being around them. It’s because
he shares their vision of a world divvied up into “spheres of
influence” in which great powers exploit their neighbors without restraint
by international norms. There’s even been chatter about the three holding a trilateral summit in November, although whether
that’s serious or just the Kremlin pandering to the president’s thirst for
prestige is unclear.
My problem with that argument is that, to Trump,
postliberal foreign policy is imperial LARPing. If China and Russia
offer him some sort of 21st-century hemispheric Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, he’ll listen intently (remember, he’s “transactional”!) but not because
he has some Kissingerian view of how “spheres of influence” might benefit
America on balance. His interest in Greenland, his designs on making Canada the
51st state, his rapaciousness toward Venezuela, all of it is about
gratifying the sense of prestige he derives from growing the population of
people who have to answer to him.
To the victor belong the spoils: All emperors
yearn for the personal glory that comes with expanding the boundaries of their
empire. Postliberalism, preliberalism—it’s all the same crap.
If there’s any coherent “policy” reason for his lavish
greeting of Xi and invitation to Putin to attend the upcoming G20, it’s that
Trump wishes to emphasize to the rest of the world that the United States no
longer regards illiberal regimes as less worthy of friendship. It’s not that he
respects China more than he does, say, Britain. (Although he does. C’mon.) It’s
that he wants the rest of the Western order to stop treating authoritarianism
as inferior to liberalism. In welcoming China’s dictator more exuberantly than
the prime minister of the U.K., he’s leading by example in normalizing
dictatorship as an acceptable model for Europe and beyond.
The shameful red-carpet treatment for fascist and
communist degenerates was one of the more predictable consequences of the
choice Americans made in 2024. If you’re looking for a silver lining in all
this, that’s it: The humiliation to which we’re being subjected is what the
people wanted, and therefore what they deserve.
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